Sunday, October 26, 2008

After a long day of running errands and shopping, the last thing I really felt like doing was cooking dinner. A few nights ago, I planned to make a pizza and picked up the dough from Trader Joe’s on my way home from work. Their dough, by the way, is awesome!

I decided to make a meatball pizza and garnish it with a little mushroom and basil. First step: take out the pizza dough from the refrigerator and let it rise. Second step: make the meatballs. Yeah, I had a few meatballs frozen, but my “perfect meal” called for all fresh ingredients. I’m a stickler that way. With the meatballs in the oven, I sautéed the mushrooms and got the rolling pin and dough ready to roll. The first time I made pizza a few years ago, I did not have a rolling pin and trying to spread the dough on the pan was comical and took fifteen minutes. Last night, rolling the garlic and herb dough was simple. I took the meatballs out of the oven, let them cool for a few minutes and began slicing. Then I built the pizza: sauce, meatballs, mushrooms, basil and cheese.

The thing that was most enjoyable was the process of making the pizza. As someone who spends considerable time in front of a computer or in meetings during a typical work week, there was something therapeutic about using my hands to prepare my meal. A few years ago, when I was laid off from work and I had time to cook every day, making dinner was practically a religious event. Though my life had moments of frustration during the job search, the daily ritual of cooking a good dinner was something that centered me and allowed me to feel a sense of extreme gratitude. It also allowed me to use my creativity as I found different ingredients to make an ordinary meal taste not-so-ordinary.

Today, as our economy is faltering and our anxiety is high, I realize that the opportunity is there for all of us to feel this sense of gratitude every time we cook and eat a meal. I realize that we shouldn’t think about what we don’t have or what we might not have in the future, but what we do have right now.

About

360 Degree Self is a blog designed to explore the things that make us well-rounded individuals. It is also an exploration of some of the things that are important to me - learning, self-improvement, creativity, culture, spirituality and commerce - and how they surround each of us in our lives.
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